This weekend I’ve been doing the final preparations for planting out my potatoes.

The little seed tubers have been left out in the sunshine to encourage them to sprout and I’m raring to go.

I like to plant my spuds on Good Friday. I’ve tried to find all sorts of sensible reasons for doing so, but the reality is that I’m dreadfully disorganised and it’s one of those old-fashioned things that sticks in my mind.

Potatoes are incredibly easy to grow and I’d encourage everyone to give it a go. You don’t even need any ground. They will grow perfectly well in large containers on a patio as long as you remember to water them.

They do prefer a good rich soil and they would rather not compete with weeds, but they are pretty tough and pretty reliable. Your own home-grown spuds are a genuine treat – far better that any you’ll buy in the supermarket – so aim to grow varieties that will reward your hard work.

Salad potatoes are the best all-round bet if you don’t have very much space. Charlotte is a reliable standby and very tasty but the best of all, if you can get it, is a French variety called Ratte.

If you have lots of ground you can grow a whole range of potato varieties from first early potatoes through to late-harvesting maincrops.

If blight is a problem in your area stick to early varieties which are usually ready to harvest before the disease takes hold.

My spuds are going into the ground where I grew my French and runner beans last year so they should benefit from the extra nitrogen left behind on the leguminous root.

I covered the ground in the winter with a thick layer of leaves to suppress annual weeds and keep the soil dry so all I need to do is dig it over with a fork to get some air back into the soil and take out the roots of any lingering perennial weeds.

The tubers go in six to nine inches deep and 12 to 18 inches apart, depending on variety.